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Making a house a home and a garden home grown.

Making a chicken cage into a seating area.

Now I apologise if you’re looking for instructions on how to make a chicken cage, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is how to unmake a chicken cage. We inherited several sheds with our house, and one of them was used to keep chickens and other birds in.

I’ve been veggie for almost 20 years and I don’t eat eggs, and my boyfriend doesn’t eat eggs often, so it didn’t seem a useful idea to keep hold of the chicken shed. I did like the idea of taking on some rescues, but its a lot of responsibility. When my Mum first suggested turning it into a veranda it seemed a good solution. But for the first while we just used the shed as a dumping storage area.

So on my parents recent visit we decided to do it. In preparation me and Simon cleared out the shed. My Dad was on hand to help take the metal wire of the cage, and it was quite an effort. We didn’t really know how much of the wood was structural and how much was just to hold the wire in place. In the end we left the side intact and removed the front section and door. We made sure to use gloves to protect our hands and took care around any nails and sharp bits. Simon sawed off a couple of bits of wood left over from the cage section and helped take down the old bird boxes.

We were left with the basic structure for the veranda, but one problem being that it stunk of bird poo. So a combinatin of sweeping, wiping, scrubbing, cleaning an elbow grace later, the cage was cleaned. It was taking on shape and could be used as some sort of beach hut or porch with seating area.

Me and mum set to on painting it, the paint that was sage green on the tin, looked more pale blue in real life, but it was liveable. The enclosed bit we painted with white paint. This bit was by far the most smelly section of the shed and I wore a mask to help. The outside needed 2 coats, and somehow I agreed to letting my mum paint some African inspired designs on the back.

Once I gave her the go, mum was off and soon she was happily painting. I think it works well. We then put some beach chairs, and plant pots around and some old rope and bunting to decorate it. The internal bit can be used as storage, so now its a really useful structure that looks nice, rather than the dumping ground it was before.